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Economic efficiency versus accessibility: Planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of Germany
BACKGROUND: Costs for the provision of regional hospital care depend, among other things, on the population density and the maximum reasonable distance to the nearest hospital. In regions with a low population density, it is a challenge to plan the number and location of hospitals with respect both...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6480868/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31018844 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-019-4016-2 |
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author | van den Berg, Neeltje Radicke, Franziska Stentzel, Ulrike Hoffmann, Wolfgang Flessa, Steffen |
author_facet | van den Berg, Neeltje Radicke, Franziska Stentzel, Ulrike Hoffmann, Wolfgang Flessa, Steffen |
author_sort | van den Berg, Neeltje |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Costs for the provision of regional hospital care depend, among other things, on the population density and the maximum reasonable distance to the nearest hospital. In regions with a low population density, it is a challenge to plan the number and location of hospitals with respect both to economic efficiency and to the availability of hospital care close to residential areas. We examined whether the hospital landscape in rural regions can be planned on the basis of a regional economic model using the example which number of paediatric and obstetric wards in a region in the Northeast of Germany is economically efficient and what would be the consequences for the accessibility when one or more of the three current locations would be closed. METHODS: A model of linear programming was developed to estimate the costs and revenues under different scenarios with up to three hospitals with both a paediatric and an obstetric ward in the investigation region. To calculate accessibility of the wards, geographic analyses were conducted. RESULTS: With three hospitals in the study region, there is a financial gap of €3.6 million. To get a positive contribution margin for all three hospitals, more cases have to be treated than the region can deliver. Closing hospitals in the parts of the region with the smallest population density would lead to reduced accessibility for about 8% of the population under risk. CONCLUSIONS: Quantitative modelling of the costs of regional hospital care provides a basis for planning. A qualitative discussion to the locations of the remaining departments and the implementation of alternative healthcare concepts should follow. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6480868 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-64808682019-05-02 Economic efficiency versus accessibility: Planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of Germany van den Berg, Neeltje Radicke, Franziska Stentzel, Ulrike Hoffmann, Wolfgang Flessa, Steffen BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: Costs for the provision of regional hospital care depend, among other things, on the population density and the maximum reasonable distance to the nearest hospital. In regions with a low population density, it is a challenge to plan the number and location of hospitals with respect both to economic efficiency and to the availability of hospital care close to residential areas. We examined whether the hospital landscape in rural regions can be planned on the basis of a regional economic model using the example which number of paediatric and obstetric wards in a region in the Northeast of Germany is economically efficient and what would be the consequences for the accessibility when one or more of the three current locations would be closed. METHODS: A model of linear programming was developed to estimate the costs and revenues under different scenarios with up to three hospitals with both a paediatric and an obstetric ward in the investigation region. To calculate accessibility of the wards, geographic analyses were conducted. RESULTS: With three hospitals in the study region, there is a financial gap of €3.6 million. To get a positive contribution margin for all three hospitals, more cases have to be treated than the region can deliver. Closing hospitals in the parts of the region with the smallest population density would lead to reduced accessibility for about 8% of the population under risk. CONCLUSIONS: Quantitative modelling of the costs of regional hospital care provides a basis for planning. A qualitative discussion to the locations of the remaining departments and the implementation of alternative healthcare concepts should follow. BioMed Central 2019-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC6480868/ /pubmed/31018844 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-019-4016-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article van den Berg, Neeltje Radicke, Franziska Stentzel, Ulrike Hoffmann, Wolfgang Flessa, Steffen Economic efficiency versus accessibility: Planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of Germany |
title | Economic efficiency versus accessibility: Planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of Germany |
title_full | Economic efficiency versus accessibility: Planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of Germany |
title_fullStr | Economic efficiency versus accessibility: Planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of Germany |
title_full_unstemmed | Economic efficiency versus accessibility: Planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of Germany |
title_short | Economic efficiency versus accessibility: Planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of Germany |
title_sort | economic efficiency versus accessibility: planning of the hospital landscape in rural regions using a linear model on the example of paediatric and obstetric wards in the northeast of germany |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6480868/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31018844 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-019-4016-2 |
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